Creating a character
Welcome to the Create a Character guide! Here, you will find a list of things to aid you in creating a proper character. This is essentially a condensed version of various TV Tropes articles, and frequently links to them. If you're not interested in specifics, you can take the easy way out and visit the Roleplay Resource List for randomizers and prompts. Intro How do you create a character, you ask? There are many different aspects of a character to be explored. Depending on the depth you want, you can delve into more or less of the aspects noted below. This can be time-consuming, but well worth your attention. Covered here are the various faces of characterization, morality, power, alignment, and competitive balance. Characterization Original and more detailed article here. To put it simply, good characterization can be summed up with the following terms: *'Inspiration and Originality': You want to make a believable and deep character? Base them on people you know. Even if you use a personality archetype as a base, give it your own twist. *'Concept': Start with a core concept before doing anything else—something to base everything else around. You can't really build a house without a foundation, right? *'Backstory': This is what your character did before getting to where they are now. The backstory should be sensible and help strengthen their personality traits and establish their way of life. *'Personality': Personality is a collective of the physical, mental, emotional, social, and behavioral characteristics of the individual. The personality is the single most important aspect of your character. If your character doesn't have an interesting personality, he or she won't be interesting at all even if the other traits are great. (See Develop Character Personality for more.) *'Appearance': Clothes and appearance can tell quite a bit about a character. Clothes can convey status, concern for hygiene, how characters want to appear to others and even reflect their personality. These appearances can be used to reveal a character or mislead your audience. Clothing, however, should not define your character (except in cases of extreme vanity). *'Traits': With personalities come traits. Some of those traits are virtues, while others are flaws. It's good to have a little of both—it adds realism. By contrast, having a character with too many positive traits or too many negative traits can be annoying to the other players. *'Hidden Depths': Having deep and even shocking secrets that are gradually revealed can make a character more interesting. *'Character Development': This is the road your characters will take through time to become what you want them to be. When done well, character development allows your characters to learn from their mistakes, the people around them, and the events of the plot; and through that learning, they will attain growth and change. It also adds another layer of depth to your characters, and even flat stereotypes can become something different if developed well. Bear in mind, however, that character development is not supposed be a road to perfection, since nobody is perfect. Removing too many flaws can lead to disaster. *'Variety Among Characters': Creating characters who are all the same, or too similar, is boring and bland. Change things up per character for the sake of flavor. Stuff to avoid *'Inconsistency': Try to avoid taking your character out of their normal behavior (unless they're an unpredictable joke character). *'Mary Sue': Your character cannot always be right, or be the most powerful, or never get injured, or do the right thing all the time. Invincible heroes are boring and irritating. link **See also: How to avoid creating a Mary Sue. *'Dark past with no consequence': If your character has a dark or abused past, show it in their personality. Conversely, don't overdo it unless the character was so severely traumatized that they will not allow themselves to let go (this is a serious real-life mental issue as well). Characterization lists Need some examples? Need a LOT of examples? The following lists of characterization topics can help you set up, flesh out, and tear down a character. *Characterization Tropes, the superindex to those listed below, and many more that are not listed here. *Backstory Index *Character Flaw Index *Emotion Tropes *Goals and Objectives Index *Identity Index *Internal Conflict Tropes *Occupation Tropes *Personal Appearance Tropes The axes of characterization Here are several independent dimensions of characterizations, each representing a different axis of character calculus. These are basic descriptions; see the Character Calculus article of TV Tropes for more tasty details. The morality axis The morality axis describes how good or evil a character is, regardless of whether they're the protagonist or even a main character at all. *'Heroic Archetype': The good guy, seeks to defeat the villain, save the princess, find the treasure, etc. *'Designated Hero': This is a character in a story who, despite being presented as heroic, is actually a jerk at best and an arguable villain at worst. This is not the same as the deliberately morally ambiguous antihero. *'Anti-Hero': An antihero is a protagonist who has the opposite of most of the traditional attributes of a hero. (S)he may be bewildered, ineffectual, deluded, or merely apathetic. More often an antihero is just an amoral misfit. Often cynical and pragmatic. *'Designated Villain': This is a character who is treated as a bad guy by the plot, despite never actually doing anything as to justify the amount of hate that they receive from the good guys. Any astute arguments and observations by this character are to be dismissed by the audience, because they are Obviously Evil™, just as the designated hero is regarded as 'good' despite having no significant virtues. *'Anti-Villain': This is a villain with heroic goals, personality traits, and/or virtues. Their desired ends are mostly good, but their means of getting there are evil. Alternatively, their desired ends are evil, but they are far more ethical or moral than most villains and they thus use fairly benign means to achieve it, and can be downright heroic on occasion. *'Big Bad': The cause of all bad happenings in a plot. *'Complete Monster': This is the most depraved of all characters; a villain utterly lacking in redeeming features. Trying to put a value on the evilness of a complete monster is like calculating the credit score of Bill Gates: it's a moot point. For example: Mrkos Brorsen. The power axis *'Eldritch Abomination': These guys range from incomprehensibly alien, madness-inducing distorters of reality; to those who are merely incredibly powerful demigods. Though commonly villainous, they can be benevolent. link *'Badass': A character who gets away with outright insane stunts that would be very hard to pull off in real life, or would get the person trying it killed several times over. They are likely made of pure testosterone. link *'Mauve Shirt': This is a former Red Shirt who has managed to get enough screen time and lines to make him stand out from the rank and file, but not enough to be part of the main cast. He is a step up from a nameless and expendable character. link *'Red Shirt': A nameless and expendable character. Armies are typically made of these. The villainous term is "mook." link *'Butt Monkey': The character who is always the butt of the demeaning joke or the "put him through hell" plotline. For whatever reason, the Butt Monkey seems to walk through life with a permanent "Kick Me" sign attached to their back, invisible to them, but all too visible to the rest of the world. link Character alignment This is a basic, condensed chart of alignment. It is not absolute, however; some characters are a mix. Also remember that alignment isn't personality and doesn't determine it. Personality determines alignment. You should first come up with the personality and see how the character functions based on it, and then see which alignment it fits. The original (and far more detailed) article can be found here. *'Lawful Good': A champion of the law. Believes in truth, justice and such, but may potentially believe in them a little too much. If poorly portrayed, he may be Lawful Stupid, treating all crimes from littering to murder as the same thing. link *'Neutral Good': Sweetness and light. Doing good is more important than upholding the law, but law is not a bad thing. link *'Chaotic Good': Rebels and free spirits who are, more often than not, seen opposing tyrants and other oppressive types. They tend to believe that things like order, discipline, and honor get in the way of doing good. link *'Lawful Neutral': The rule-abiding sort. Law and order is more important than whether you're good or evil, though justice may not be a universal constant to them. They'll arrest a robber or rapist, but may also kick a family out of their home for failing to pay rent, even if they were poor. link *'Neutral Neutral (True Neutral)': Comes in two flavors: "Keeping the Balance" and "Just Doesn't Care." Keeping the balance may entail preventing a major power from taking hold or otherwise just keeping things "fair." Then again, such characters of either flavor may simply be too dumb to know the difference between good and evil. Most punch-clock villains fit under this alignment. link *'Chaotic Neutral': The ultimate free spirits, or just lunatics. It can go either way. Chaotic Neutral characters are all about freedom, and don't care so much about morality. Sometimes they're just amoral nutjobs, and sometimes they're generally good people with a wild streak that sometimes leads them into bad things. link *'Lawful Evil': The ordered sort of evil, that often ends up in charge. Well-structured, large-scale and often scarily successful evil. May believe in keeping order at all costs, or may simply believe that a well-ordered system is so much easier to exploit. link *'Neutral Evil': The Neutral Evil alignment can be even more dangerous than the Chaotic Evil alignment—simply because you can't be sure of which way they'll swing in the end. Neutral Evil characters are primarily in it for themselves, because while they are usually villains, they can also swing to the good guy's side. link *'Chaotic Evil': Chaotic Evil is the truly evil free spirit. They will do whatever they want to (even if—and sometimes, especially—it hurts other people) and rules just don't matter to them. Whereas a Neutral Evil character will sometimes follow the law if it is convenient, the Chaotic Evil character occasionally takes pleasure in going out of their way to break the law. A good example would be the late Mrkos Brorsen. link Further reading on alignment *Lawful Stupid, Chaotic Stupid *Stupid Good *Stupid Evil *Selfish Good, Selfish Evil *Always Chaotic Evil *Order versus Chaos *Good and Evil for Your Convenience Competitive balance For further reading, see the original TV Tropes article for Competitive Balance. Competitive balance is very important to creating a fair character. Since these options are meant to compete directly against each other, they need to be roughly equally powerful, or else you run into the problems with OP characters. For each advantage, a balanced character will have a necessary drawback. Many types of these characters are based on their performance in various areas. Note that the character tropes here are relative. For example, while a character described as "fast and powerful" is a Lightning Bruiser by itself, but if there is another character who is faster and stronger, then the former is Jack-of-All-Stats: *'Jack-of-All-Stats': Balanced; average-ish good at everything, the best at nothing. link *'Fragile Speedster': Weak, but fast. link *'Glass Cannon': Strong offense, but weak defense. link *'Mighty Glacier': Powerful and resistant, but slow. link *'Stone Wall': Strong defense, but weak offense. link *'Lightning Bruiser': Strong, tough, and fast; frequently a Game Breaker unless balanced by some other weakness, such as range or cost. link Category:How-to articles